Equipping & Encouraging Sunday School and Small Group Leaders

The one thing we owe volunteer leaders

Today’s post is an excerpt taken from a book I highly recommend, especially if you are a pastor or staff leader responsible for your church’s Bible teaching ministry. Building Leaders by Aubrey Malphurs and Will Mancini has a hard-hitting, in-your-face message: it’s our job to equip those who lead. In a convicting part of the book, here is what they say:

Though many churches have awakened to the need to develop godly, competent leadership and are talking about it, few are doing anything about it…many churches don’t know how to develop leaders…Leadership training today has yet to become a priority for most Christian organizations, and we’re convinced that until all this changes, they as well as the rest of the world will continue to flounder in the sea of change that has ushered in the twenty-first century…If we ask our people to lead any ministry in the church, we’re responsible to provide them with continual leadership training. If we can’t do this, we have no business asking them to serve, doing both them and the ministry an injustice. (pp.11-27)

I’ve just completed the creation of a 2018 training calendar for a local church in my area. I’m ready to present the plan to the pastor, and to provide oversight to this church’s training efforts related to all Sunday School teachers. It didn’t take long to develop the strategy; the harder work will come later as I seek to implement the training. But we’re going to have a plan, and we’re going to work the plan. I have no doubt that the group leaders at this church will respond favorably to the opportunities to be trained and to become more effective Bible study leaders.

Pastor or staff leader, how are you preparing to train your people for the remainder of 2017? All of 2018? I agree with the two authors – if you ask someone to provide leadership, you owe them the training they need to succeed.

Let’s reverse a bad trend. May the church become the place that leads out in training its people, and may it not be known for mediocre ministry.